By: Amal Chandra Published in: *The W**ire* Date: December 25, 2025 Source: https://thewire.in/communalism/the-denial-of-a-christmas-holiday-exposes-a-deeper-crisis-of-religious-freedom-in-india Behind 'just' one denied holiday lies a pattern of symbolic exclusion and growing vulnerability for religious minorities.
The decision to deny a Christmas holiday <https://www.manoramanews.com/kerala/latest/2025/12/24/lok-bhavan-employees-required-to-work-on-christmas.html> to staff at Kerala Lok Bhavan – a decision that went well beyond questions of administrative propriety – triggered a public outcry across India. Staff were instructed to attend <https://www.deshabhimani.com/deshabhimani-english-/kerala-news/kerala-christmas-holiday-cancelled-vajpayee-72990> official programmes marking ‘Good Governance Day’, observed annually on 25 December to commemorate the birth anniversary of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The controversy around Lok Bhavan was further intensified by an earlier episode involving its official calendar <https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/thiruvananthapuram/2025/Dec/24/row-over-savarkars-pic-in-lok-bhavan-calendar>, which featured a portrait of V.D. Savarkar on the February page. This inclusion drew sharp criticism and was widely seen as an ideological assertion rather than a neutral historical reference. When read together, these developments underscored a pattern rather than an accident. While the December 25 observance was officially framed as routine, its political symbolism was impossible to miss. Christmas is not merely a date on the calendar; it is the most sacred day for India’s Christian community. The insistence on compulsory attendance on that day, particularly in an institution representing a state with a substantial Christian population, signalled not neutrality but a calculated assertion of majoritarian precedence. What unfolded was a microcosm of a deeper and more troubling reality: the steady erosion of religious accommodation in public life under an increasingly assertive Hindutva political culture. This pattern is neither new nor confined <https://thewire.in/communalism/sangh-scares-off-santa-a-christmas-of-fear> solely to Kerala. In Uttar Pradesh this year <https://scroll.in/latest/1089549/up-schools-not-to-celebrate-christmas-observe-vajpayees-birth-centenary-instead-report>, the Yogi Adityanath government announced that schools would remain open on December 25 instead of observing Christmas as a holiday, directing that students attend mandatory programmes commemorating the birth centenary of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee – a decision that drew sharp criticism from Christian organisations and civil rights groups, who warned that it marginalises the Christian community and undermines India’s secular ethos in public education.Kerala’s case acquires significance precisely because the state has historically been held up as a counterpoint to regions of extreme communal polarisation. Yet even here, church leaders and political representatives have flagged an unsettling rise in disruptions to Christmas celebrations <https://thewire.in/rights/the-christmas-party-that-turned-sour>. Catholic bishops ecumenical bodies publicly condemned attempts by Sangh Pariva r <https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/attacks-on-christmas-festivities-in-kerala-draw-political-church-condemnation-1033445>affiliates to object to public Christmas displays and carol-singing programmes, describing them as deliberate provocations aimed at shrinking Christian visibility in shared civic spaces. Political leaders across party lines warned that such actions undermine Kerala’s long-standing pluralistic culture and violate constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. Symbolic marginalisation, however, is only the most visible layer of a far more alarming reality. India has witnessed a sustained and verifiable surge in targeted violence against Christians. According to the “Hate and Targeted Violence Against Christians in India: Yearly Report 2024 <https://thewire.in/communalism/attacks-against-christians-increased-by-500-since-2014-rights-groups>“, published by the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s Religious Liberty Commission and cited by the World Evangelical Alliance <https://worldea.org/report-by-christian-body-shows-sharp-rise-in-violence-against-community-in-2024/>, documented incidents rose from 601 in 2023 to at least 830 in 2024. This represents one of the highest annual figures recorded in the past decade and reflects not episodic unrest but a structural trend <https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/03/india-christian-persecution-increase-anticonversion-attacks/>. These incidents include physical assaults, disruption of worship services, vandalism of churches, social boycotts and the strategic use of anti-conversion laws <https://thewire.in/communalism/anti-conversion-laws-and-the-mobilising-of-coercive-power> to harass pastors, priests and ordinary believers. The geography of this violence reveals an unmistakable political pattern. Uttar Pradesh continues to record the highest number of reported incidents, followed by Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana – states where militant majoritarian rhetoric has increasingly seeped into local governance, policing practices and political mobilisation. The concentration of cases in these regions underscores that anti-Christian violence is not a fringe phenomenon but one closely aligned with the ideological ecosystem of Hindutva politics. The brutality of these attacks has also taken an unmistakably personal turn. In Odisha’s Balasore district, Catholic priests and nuns were assaulted by a mob <https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/how-attack-on-christian-priests-nuns-in-odisha-feeds-into-a-wider-trend-2768903-2025-08-10> in a widely reported incident while returning from a religious service, accused – without evidence – of “forced conversions”. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India described the attack as part of a disturbing national pattern <https://catholicconnect.in/news/catholic-priests-nuns-catechist-attacked-by-bajrang-dal-mob-in-jaleswar-odisha> in which clergy are increasingly treated as legitimate targets of suspicion and violence. In Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur, the situation deteriorated further when senior clergy, including the vicar general of the local diocese, were allegedly assaulted inside a police station <https://www.thenewsminute.com/kerala/attack-on-christian-priests-in-jabalpur-mp-police-register-fir-after-outrage> while attempting to intervene on behalf of Christian pilgrims detained on dubious charges. An FIR was filed only after public outrage, but led to no immediate arrests, raising serious concerns about institutional complicity and selective enforcement of the law. Chhattisgarh offers, perhaps, the starkest illustration of how physical violence and legal coercion <https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/arrest-and-unrest-on-arrest-of-nuns-in-chhattisgarh/article69874057.ece> now work in tandem. In 2023 and 2024, multiple reports documented the detention of Christian nuns and pastors <https://theleaflet.in/due-process/the-nuns-the-state-and-the-machinery-of-suspicion-an-account> at railway stations and public transit points on allegations of trafficking or forced conversion – charges consistently denied and rarely substantiated. Civil liberties groups have argued that these arrests function less as law enforcement measures and more as tools of intimidation, designed to criminalise Christian presence in public spaces. Churches themselves have become targets <https://thewire.in/communalism/chhattisgarh-mob-torches-christian-home-churches-over-burial-dispute-survivor-alleges-hindutva-role>. In Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh, a mob of Hindu extremists stormed the Peniel Prayer Fellowship <https://www.christiantoday.com/news/bibles-burnt-as-hindu-extremists-launch-brutal-assault-on-indian-church> during a Sunday service in Borsi village on June 8, ransacking the church, breaking chairs and musical instruments, burning Bibles and assaulting worshippers – including one pastor who was left unconscious – as assailants shouted slogans like “Jai Shri Ram” and told congregants to stop gathering for worship. Afterwards, many believers stopped attending services out of fear, illustrating how sacred spaces are increasingly vulnerable to violent disruption. This climate of hostility is reinforced by social and cultural intimidation that stops short of violence but steadily normalises exclusion. Statements by organisations affiliated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, urging Hindus to avoid Christmas celebrations, frame Christian cultural expression as alien and suspect. In Haridwar, Uttarakhand, Christmas events were cancelled following protests by religious groups who labelled them “anti-Hindu”, a development that illustrates how communal pressure <https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/government-run-hotel-in-uttarakhands-haridwar-cancels-christmas-event-after-threats-from-priests-2840307-2025-12-23> now shapes public culture. None of this can be separated from the political context in which <https://thewire.in/communalism/loneliness-of-being-christian-in-india/?utm_source=chatgpt.com> it is taking place. Anti-conversion laws, now enforced across several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states, have created a climate of legal vulnerability for Christians, in which routine religious activity can be reframed as criminal conspiracy. These laws often function less as protections against coercion and more as instruments that legitimise vigilantism and encourage mob intervention. The human cost of this sustained hostility <https://thewire.in/communalism/seven-incidents-across-india-where-the-hindutva-brigade-disrupted-christmas-celebrations/> is immense. Beyond physical injury, Christian communities live under constant psychological pressure and fear <https://thewire.in/communalism/sangh-scares-off-santa-a-christmas-of-fear>, uncertain whether their next prayer meeting or festival celebration will invite police scrutiny or mob violence. What makes this moment particularly dangerous is the growing normalisation of such exclusions. When the denial of religious holidays, the assault on clergy, or the vandalisation of churches becomes routine news rather than a constitutional emergency, it signals a democratic backsliding that should concern all Indians, not only Christians. India’s Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and equal citizenship, yet the lived reality increasingly suggests that these rights are contingent on political identity. The denial of a Christmas holiday at Kerala Lok Bhavan must therefore be understood not as an administrative footnote but as a revealing symptom of a larger ideological shift – one in which the public sphere is subtly but steadily reoriented around majoritarian priorities. It marks the shrinking of symbolic and material space for minorities within the nation’s civic imagination. Reversing this trend requires more than episodic condemnation. It demands political leadership willing to defend constitutional secularism without equivocation, law enforcement agencies that act impartially and a media ecosystem that treats attacks on minorities not as peripheral stories but as central to the health of Indian democracy. Vigilantism rooted in religious chauvinism must be confronted, not rationalised. In a country that prides itself on diversity and civilisational pluralism, the sustained assault on Christian life, from denied holidays to physical violence, stands as a grave indictment. The denial of a single holiday may appear minor, but it encapsulates a deeper malaise: the quiet normalisation of exclusion in the age of political majoritarianism. India’s democratic promise will ultimately be judged not by ceremonial affirmations of unity, but by how resolutely it protects its most vulnerable citizens from the machinery of hate. *Amal Chandra is an author, political analyst and columnist. He posts on X @ens_socialis. *
